


aquarium

by asiren (meliorismo)



Series: Author's Favorites [1]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Artificial Intelligence, Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:21:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25028419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meliorismo/pseuds/asiren
Summary: There's something deeply unsettling about robots — during a wet evening in February, Sehun got to know that first hand.
Relationships: Kim Jongin | Kai/Oh Sehun
Series: Author's Favorites [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1652992
Comments: 3
Kudos: 26
Collections: Challenge #4 — Into the Future





	aquarium

**Author's Note:**

> my biggest thank you to all the mods @ tiny sparks (aka the best flash challenge) for getting me out of my funk and back into writing again. participating was such a wonderful experience, and i got to write with one of my favorite scifi genres: steampunk. i will maybe expand this into a bigger work later on, but for today i offer you guys this small piece!! hope you enjoy.  
> also, all mistakes are mine.

There’s something incredibly unsettling about robots. It’s maybe their exposed wires, the vapor running through their bodies staring at people in the face as if they have eyes, but it’s more about the way they are just _there._ For the longest time, robots weren’t aware, as far as anyone can tell. It’s a recent development. It’s a new, horrible thing, and people are… 

Well. 

People _are._

There’s nothing more you can say about it, really. 

Oh Sehun woke at precisely 4AM, washed his face, peed and ate half an apple. It was Monday and he had to be at the factory before sunrise; a bad job, terrible pay, but it was enough to cover the many, many bills that kept pilling every month on his kitchen table. He was a low level worker, and perhaps even the lowest. Not an engineer like the guys in suits that paraded through the lines of production saying this and that, looking important, lecturing people about doing their jobs. Sehun knew how to put robots together. It wasn’t that difficult. You just had to think of them as something fundamentally less than you. 

“I’ll be back soon”, Sehun said to the immobile figure standing close to the door. Someone could (in another life) think he was sleeping, maybe dreaming, if not for the convoluted mess of _things_ running through him, inside and out. Technology was messy. There was nothing scientist could do, even in the wake of the demands of more life like robots. All they could make work was the face. They were all so _pretty._ Something out of a fairytale right before the nightmare that was their bodies. “Jongin? Will you be okay?” 

“Just fine”, Jongin said, without opening his eyes. Resting. Far away inside his head, between the numbers and half-formed feelings. Sehun had conflicted thoughts about that. But again, he had conflicted _everything_ about Jongin. No news there. 

“My shift ends at six. It shouldn’t run more than that. It’s illegal since last month.” Sehun said, uselessly, as he did every single day. Waiting for a reaction that never came. He sighed, grabbed his coat and left. Jongin didn’t watch. 

His eyes were still closed. 

It all started like this:

During a particularly chilling evening in February, Sehun was going home when he saw a pile of _something_ in an alley. He thought it could, maybe, be something useful for the house. At the time it barely had a couch and a bed, and he was starting to get desperate for the feeling his coworkers said they felt after becoming adults. Sehun was already twenty years old — he was almost six years behind everyone else. 

It wasn’t a table and it wasn’t a cabinet. It was a thing, maybe, if you squint your eyes and use your imagination. An humanoid figure. A something. 

Sehun blinked. It was still there.

“Are you okay?”, he asked, because it felt like a good idea to get it out of the way. Was that an actual human being?

“I’m fine”, the thing said. Its voice was raspy, like it was thirsty. Sehun felt bad for it. 

“Do you need any help?”

“No.” 

“Well. Okay.” Sehun said, and went on his way. He was freezing and he had work early in the next morning, it being a Sunday. He thought a little about the thing, maybe some homeless person, more probably a discarded robot. But he went, because it was none of his business, and he didn’t want it to be. 

Of course, that evening, cold and gray: that was how it started.

Sehun walked past the thing every single day for a week before he cracked. He was soft hearted; always had been. When he was a child he used to collect strays. Hide them all in the attic — birds, cats, squirrels. Graduating to people was a small step, really. He wasn’t surprised. His mother, God bless her soul, wouldn’t be either. 

“You want to get out of here?”, he asked the thing. It blinked at him, slowly, like he was thinking hard about it. Looking closer, it was clearly a robot wrapped on a couple of blankets. Did robots feel the cold? Sehun spent his days building them, and had no idea. 

“Do you want sex?” he asked, his voice hollow like all robots. And like all people dead inside. 

“What? No!” he said, scandalized. He didn’t start throwing things only because there was nothing close enough. Sex was weird, robots were weird, Sehun wanted _nothing_ to do with it. 

And still. 

“My house is warm, it’s all I’m talking about. Take it or leave it, I don’t care.”

The thing nodded, slowly, and rose up. “I’m Jongin”, it said, and that was that. Sehun suddenly had a flatmate.

“Do you feel?” he asked Jongin one morning, mouth full of rations. 

“Sometimes”, he answered, “not always.”

“Do you, like. Do you like me?” 

“Sometimes”, he answered, “not always.”

Sehun nodded, understanding, and went off to build more robots. When he got home, at 6PM, Jongin was standing by the door, eyes closed, living among the wires and thoughts inside his head.


End file.
